Navigating a broken healthcare system is hard enough without having to justify a surgery to your own family.

When a man finally secured a long-awaited surgery date after nearly two years of waiting, he discovered it landed on his son’s first day of school — and his wife made it clear she thought the surgery wasn’t serious enough to miss it.

Keep reading for all the drama.

AITA: Missing son’s first schoolday due to Strabismus surgery

I have a lazy eye. I finally got myself to go for surgery.

The surgery will not improve my eyesight — it’s essentially just to correct the position of my eyes.

Dealing with this health condition has been a long road.

I am in a country with a difficult healthcare system. I had to wait almost a year just to get an initial appointment at the hospital.

For surgery, I now have to wait another 9 months.

So when he finally found a date, he soon discovered it put him in an uncomfortable position.

I made the appointment for surgery, but later found out it falls precisely on my son’s first day of school — which is a big deal in my country.

Now he feels stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I decided I’ll try to reschedule my surgery, but if this results in me waiting another six months or a year, I will stick to the original date and miss my son’s first day of school.

I don’t like it and I feel bad about it, but I’ve still decided this way.

His wife proceeds to underplay the entire thing.

My wife says strabismus surgery is plastic surgery. Her exact words were: “If it were serious surgery, like for cancer, but in this case…”

Basically: how dare I miss such an important day of my son’s life?

Am I very selfish? AITA?

It’s not like he’s missing the day for a frivolous reason.

Redditors chime in with their thoughts.

This commenter helps put things into perspective.

Problems with healthcare put people in these kinds of situations all the time.

This surgery is way more than just cosmetic.

In the grand scheme of things, this surgery is way more important.

This man wasn’t selfish — he was only doing the best he could.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.